What do you need to keep a living language?

Actually, the same as for any knowledge or skill (including the memories of the muscles), you need to use the knowledge or the skill. The brain is built with functions to take away and store more non-central, whatever it finds that you don’t use it. You can’t learn something perfect and not use it for 20 years, and expect that everything is still working. First of all, you lose speed, it takes at least more time to reach the knowledge. But you also have the risk that almost nothing is left. The brain is always cleaning up and discards what it thinks you never use.

Think of the rather unusual situation that a child in the age of seven has learnt to fully practise a language, but then never come to use it. Let’s say the father dies and he was the only person who spoke that language. What can we expect to be the rests of the language after 20 years not hearing the language? Probably quite a lot. To learn a whole language of say around 20 000 words will be considered a very great effort by the brain. This will guarantee a kind of priority in the brain, but under all these years a higher priority is given to much other spoken material.

What about the language knowledge pupils get from the education in a foreign language? Rather often it happens that you take part in an education in a language, that you never use. What you never learn, will give you no rests and all small rest, that after perhaps 20 years are left, if any, is some grammatical chant, that the school use to work with. What makes the difference?

The only way to learn a language is by communicating it. In the school, you don’t communicate and because of that no one is learning any serviceable language.

Quite few students with high marks from the school has discovered that, I did it myself in the lower teenage, when they abroad start to use their high valued skills and discover that it doesn’t work. The grammar from the school is more in the way, when you start to communicate in that language. The same goes for the semantic parts of the education. Sure, you need words, but a lot of communication is without words and mostly they come in long phrases and in a context.

As long as the person is thinking in translating from one language to another, the communication is very slow. When you start to think all the time in the target language, everything is done quick and effective. Many describe this difference in terms of that they start to dream in the target language. Then you have an active language, which is by the further use build up.

Passive listening is, when done very often and intensive, also building skills for an active language. This is shown by that the Netherlands and Sweden don’t dub foreign films and TV programs. It is very easy to listen to the great difference it makes for the skills and knowledge in English in these countries and any other non-English speaking country. All persons in any age in those populations speak and understand English, even children under four years. The children have had a massive contact by the English language and also realized the importance to learn English. Children learn what they think is important.

Children who don’t want to learn have been mistreated earlier in their life.

To repair it’s mistake not having a common language, India need to use the TV to help the preschool children to get a good start with their English. The school can under eight years build a good language on a good start. A talked, written and read English. This is needed to help people to share information and decisions in a fast and effective and democratic way.

Lennart Warenius   Goa the 17th of January 2017